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THE LIGHTS OF BEACON HILL 

91 Cbristmas iResBiaje 

BY 
ABBIE FARWELL BROWN 



"From her Beacon-Heights 
The dome-crowned City spreads her rays '* 

Dr. Holmes 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
1922 




THE LIGHTS OF BEACON HILL 

^ Cbrifitmas iflefifiage 

"Merry Christmas to everybody!" 

Beacon Hill flashes out the message from thousands 
of candles shining down the quaint and narrow 
streets crowded with merry-makers; crowded too 
with great memories, bright traditions, and green 
promise. 

No Beacon rises now on top of the old Hill. From 
1635 it stood, several times renewed, a hundred and 
fifty years. But it was blown down in a gale in 1789 
and never rebuilt. Its first warning use was outworn. 
But we like to think that a Light still shines from 
here. On Christmas Eve at least it draws folk like 
moths from all the regions round about, and from 
far. And the light of the good old custom has been 
reflected to many cities over the land, who celebrate 
with their mother-town to-night. 

Up and down and roundabout the Hill go the 



4 The Lights of Beacon Hill 

jostling good-natured revelers. They pause before 
candle-lighted windows to glimpse the fair interiors, 
where portraits by Copley or Stuart reflect hospit- 
able smiles from living counterparts below. They 
sound the old brass knockers on wreathed doors, 
opening to old-fashioned feasts of goodies. They fol- 
low the choirs from stately mansion to open square, to 
convent, hospital, — even to the Jail and those who 
wait in darkness for the Christmas message: calling 
joyously to one another, — "Merry Christmas!" 

Do they hear answering echoes up and down these 
streets? They should. The Present, the Past and 
the Future join in the happy cry. For the old Hill 
has always been hospitable (no Puritan region this). 
It had Httle to do with Endicott and his dour fellows 
who cut the cross out of the English flag and gayety 
out of the revels at Merrymount. It had brief deal- 
ing with Winthrop and his Roundheads. It has a 
tradition all its own, that begins in the hospitality of 
a book-lover, and has never lost that flavor. 

Yes, our streets are inconvenient, steep and sHp- 
pery. The corners are abrupt, the contours perverse, 
— the horror of chauffeurs. But Christmas Eve 
makes no account of chauffeurs; pilgrims must come 
afoot. 

It may well be that the gibes of our envious neigh- 
bors have a foundation and that these dear crooked : 
lanes of ours were indeed traced in ancestral mud by ; 
absent-minded kine. See Dr. Holmes's picture of the 
hill-slope and its earhest white settler; 



I; 







6 The Lights of Beacon Hill 

^^With spongy bogs that drip and fill 

A yellow pond with muddy rain, 
Beneath the shaggy southern hill 

Lies wet and low the Shawmut plain. 
And hark! the trodden branches crack; 

A crow flaps off with startled scream, 
A straying woodchnck canters back; 

A bittern rises from the stream; 
Leaps from his lair a frightened deer; 

An otter plunges in the pool; — 
Here comes old Shawmut's pioneer, 

The Parson on his brindled bull,'' 

Who thinks of him to-night? Does his ghost walk, 
I wonder, hospitable still? Somewhere between the 
Common and Louisburg Square dwelt our First Citi- 
zen, the gentle hermit, William Blackstone. You 
should think of him while you are glancing about that 
little town-within-a-town, seeking to identify the 
houses where Howells lived and wrote, where Jenny 
Lind was married, and where Louisa Alcott passed 
her happiest days; where old Bronson Alcott died. 

Blackstone built his thatched cottage near the ''ex- 
cellent spring" of water that had toled him thither, 
one of those that gave the name to "Shawmut." I 
believe it is that very spring under my West Cedar cel- 
lar, a forty-foot cobbled well, with remains of ancient 
pipes leading from it in various directions. From this 
spring to his famous apple-orchard, and so about 
the acres of his little farm that included much of our 



A Christmas Message 



Common, he rode his "moose-colored bull," treading 
the unlevel ways your feet will go Christmasing. 

Blackstone was a godly Churchman and a scholar. 
He brought a good little library with him — the first 
of many on the Hill; and so we have the beginnings 
of our bookish tradition. How many books since then 
have been written and published, bought and housed, 
read and circulated on Beacon Hill! How many are 
still to be! "Study Hill" might well be its nom de 
plume, as Blackstone named his second New England 
home. And its motto might be "Hospitality and 
Books." 

Blackstone was the first white man privileged to 
act as host on Beacon Hill. He must have been a 
sweet and lovable soul, that first clerical Hill dweller. 
For here he lived an exile in the wilderness for five 
years before other colonists came nearer than the 
Harbor, safe among Indians who had little cause to 
love a paleface, the same Indians with whom later 
the Puritan Winthrop could not get along. There was 
to be no "Merry Christmas" for the Puritans when 
they landed. But Blackstone was no Roundhead. 
Let us imagine him as lighting the first Christmas 
candle on the Hill and telling the Christmas story to 
those wondering Red Men who crept to see. Perhaps 
he made a hospitable feast for them in the English 
custom. Wild turkey? It may have been. But more 
likely it was the favorite venison pasty of old tradition, 
wherewithal Endicott treated Winthrop with a flourish . 

That was a happy first Christmas party. But 



8 The Lights of Beacon Hill 

Blackstone's hospitality was soon put to a more try- 
ing test. In 1630 came Winthrop and his solemn fel- 
lows to Charlestown across the river. They were 
perishing for fresh water, and Blackstone heard of it. 
He was a good Christian before he was a hermit. 
With a sigh he got into his little shallop, moored at 
the foot of Beacon Street (where my father used to 
fish), and rowed over to the Charlestown shore, to 
bid the newcomers to the springs of Shawmut. Glad 
they were to come, those thirsty, feverish souls. But 
to Blackstone, watching from the top of Beacon Hill, 
their approach must have meant heart-sickness. He 
had exiled himself for the sake of peace and quiet. 
Before long he sold out his farm, including acres of 
our cherished Common, and fled in disgust to the 
wilderness of Rhode Island. 

The Puritans were too near for him, even at the 
North End. But they never invaded the western 
slope of Beacon Hill, — or Sentry Hill as it was first 
called. Not till after the Revolution was it built over. 
For a long time the houses of Copley the artist and 
Hancock the patriot on Beacon Street were the only 
dwellings on the barren Hill, which was then quite 
"out of town." And these houses reflected hospital- 
ity and genial joy in life, culture and progress. 

"0 happy town beside the sea 
Whose roads lead everywhere to all! " 

that was Emerson's phrase. Our pioneer paths did 
radiate from the ''Beacon Heights" to the four 




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10 The Lights of Beacon Hill 

quarters of the world. And down them tramped the 
sturdy Yankee feet of men bearing books under their 
arms and the ancient tradition in their red blood. 
Down these roads traveled also high thoughts con- 
ceived upon our Hill. 

Everybody knows the legend of the barn door in 
the nondescript building that houses Odd Volumes; 
how it must forever offer a thoroughfare for the 
ghostly Copley cow, pining for forbidden pasturage 
on the denuded Common. Here were pasture lanes 
and garden paths, squares where stood farm-yards or 
rope-walks; mysterious gardens that intrigued the 
Autocrat, — "hidden seraglios" he called them. Off 
Revere Street what fairy-like " courts" fragrant with 
Christmas green! On the dark northern slope, off 
Joy Street, stood the chapel where Garrison first 
lifted up his voice for freedom. Wendell Phillips 
was born on Walnut Street, in its first brick house. 
And on the "spacious summit" of the Hill, near 
where the Beacon used to stand, Charles Sumner 
kept an eye on the State House. 

The Hill is full of surprise. Even if you were born 
here you are never quite used to it. Thackeray loved 
it; declared it like an EngHsh cathedral town. But it 
is not really like anything. Fashion and frumpery; 
libraries and laundries; romance and reason; art and 
argot; evergreen oases and jauntily renovated grand- 
eurs; caroling cobblers and serenaded convents; wan- 
dering waits and waiting wonders, — where will you 
find its peer this Christmas Eve? 



A Christmas Message ii 

Hardly a site but has its legend, whether it be a 
stately mansion with courtyard and fountain, or a 
drab boarding-house soon to be "reclaimed." But 
maybe even the ugly tenement squatting on a bright 
memory shelters something still finer than a legend 
— a promise. The Hill is swarming with youthful 
dreamers. Young Poetry, Art, and Music are *'at 
home" here to-night, or wandering bright-eyed with 
the singers. 

Probably you will not have time this busy Eve to 
step aside from the glowing region of lights into the 
dingy purlieus that await regeneration. But recall 
for a minute that down below on Bulfinch Place once 
Walt Whitman lodged, and there dwelt William War- 
ren, who for a generation made the city laugh. In 
grim Ashburton Place, now the den of lawyers and 
bookmen, lived on a while Henry James and his au- 
thor-father. On the opposite side lodged Horace Mann. 

Under the arch of the State House a choir is delight- 
fully singing. But as you glance down the tree-lined 
slope of beautiful Mount Vernon Street, which Henry 
James called ''the happiest street-scene the country 
could show," don't you catch again a murmurous 
ghostly overtone, still sweeter, from our choir invisi- 
ble? For below here Aldrich lived and here he died. 
At Number 63 Whittier used to visit. Mrs. Howe 
was a sometime neighbor, and Marion Crawford. 
Here lived John D. Long, Channing, Mrs. A. D. T. 
Whitney, beloved of old-fashioned girls, and Anne 
Whitney, sculptor and poet. 



12 The Lights of Beacon Hill 

Close by worked a group of historians, hard to 
match: Prescott, Motley, Parkman, Adams, Quincy, 
Ticknor, At the top of decorous Chestnut Street the 
Radical Club philosophized (there are clubs more rad- 
ical now!). Holmes lived here for a time, so did Mrs. 
Howe. Through melancholy violet window-panes 
Edwin Booth looked out Hamlet-wise upon a world 
out of joint. And when east winds blew and sea-gulls 
screamed Richard H. Dana got whiffs of his "Two 
Years Before the Mast." 

Through the Square to funny, steep old Pinckney 
Street, the perennial haunt of authors, one or more of 
whom may generally be seen cHmbing up or sliding 
down from an eyrie. From the top, where our own 
AHce Brown presides, in the quaint house once habited 
by E. P. Whipple, well-nigh every site deserves its 
golden star. Here for a while beloved Louise Guiney 
dwelt, wrapped in dreams. Celia Thaxter and Haw- 
thorne were sometime guests, even as Robert Frost 
makes his headquarters here when he descends from 
North of Boston. In her hardest days Louisa Alcott 
wearily climbed this slope to a simple home. Here 
abode Jacob Abbott, father of the earnest "Rollo." 
By a modest hearth-stone at Number 84 the Al- 
driches entertained Dickens with his double watch- 
chains; and here "Tom Bailey" told the Story of a 
Bad Boy. Longfellow got his inspiration for "The 
Hanging of the Crane" from the same hospitable 
fire-place. But who can distinguish all the Voices? 

Down over Blackstone's acres a constant proces- 



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14 The Lights of Beacon Hill 

sion of dreamers' feet have passed. Charles Street, the 
ancient river beach, — now swept well-nigh bare of 
the old mansions, was a literary thoroughfare for the 
English-speaking world, when James T. Fields lived 
at Number 148. Sarah Orne Jewett made her home 
for years with Mrs. Fields, and all the great writers 
and lecturers were their guests, in the "long drawing 
room" "with relics and tokens so thick on its walls as 
to make it . . . the votive temple to memory." "The 
Autocrat" was written hard by, when Holmes dwelt 
on Charles Street, and Lucretia P. Hale invented the 
joyous Peterkins in this neighborhood. 

Here we are, almost home. West Cedar Street is 
narrow and uneven, and the Jail bulks ugly above the 
end of it, beyond un-Christian regions. But above us 
spreads a blue avenue where by day the circling gulls 
remind us of the near sea and shipping; where by 
night passes "the white procession of the stars." 
Here hved Percival Lowell who visioned the Martian 
canals, T. W. Parsons who caught an echo of Dante, 
MacDowell who heard the music of the spheres, and a 
constantly varying group of musicians and writers. 

I like to remember that once Phillips Brooks rolled 
hoop here with little Me. Once Dr. Holmes paused 
to pat my long curls. And Margaret Deland's big 
dog, when she was Hving just beyond, used every day 
to escort me part way to school, my little paw held 
safely in his big teeth. I remember too how we chil- 
dren used always to run past "Number 13" because 
it was "unlucky." We knew nothing of its particular 



A Christmas Message 



15 



ghost, unless by instinct. A certain lady has often 
seen the stately blue uniformed figure of Admiral De- 
catur passing up and down the narrow staircase of 
this house where he met a sudden end. She speaks 
of it quite simply. But who indeed would mind any of 
the pleasant ghosts that haunt our Hill, ''beautifully 
peopled as Jacob's Ladder"? 

Every year for a day in spring and fall, my humble 
back yard offers the hospitality of its oak tree and pa- 
tient flower boxes to a shy brown minstrel, a hermit 
thrush. Perhaps his forbears sipped of Blackstone's 
spring, so he keeps tryst. Let him be the living sym- 
bol of our Hill's perennial tradition, even as our 
Christmas candles mean more than the beauty they 
reveal. Let our light still shine, while Books and Hos- 
pitality prevail. 

"Merry Christmas to everybody, from Beacon 
Hill!" 




CAMBRIDGE • MASSACHUSETTS 



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